Concealed gun could have put shooter down

I’m writing this in response to all the gun control people who write that guns should be controlled, or outlawed, so they would feel safer.

I wonder how many of those people have been in a mass shooting and experienced the horrors involved.

I was caught in a mass shooting before they became fashionable. This was back in 1994. I was the fourth one shot that day while walking out of a military hospital.

I was trapped between two automatic doors leading out when a gunman came from around the building and shot the man in front of me. He then turned to shoot me, and I had nowhere to go inside the doors.

After he shot me, he ran inside the hospital pharmacy waiting room full of people and started firing at whoever moved. I was laying on the floor, still in between the doors, looking up, watching him shoot everyone. He was about 10 feet away.

If I had been allowed to carry a concealed weapon, or anyone else, for that matter, that man would have been brought down quickly. Clear shots were there since no one was in the line of fire. Since no one could carry a weapon, he shot 27 people that day.

He chased a pregnant woman to the parking lot and shot her four times, killing her and her unborn child.

I saw a friend and his wife and 2-year-old end up in separate hospitals from the shooting. My friend would later be medically discharged after learning to walk again.

Those people who fear the Wild West shootout scene when it comes to concealed carry have no idea what advantage returning fire is, when it comes to dealing with these cowards. They pick a place where people are defenseless on purpose. The Aurora, Colo., shooting was in a “no concealed” theater. The media doesn’t talk about that.

I know those people who want guns off the streets have no concept of what it means to live through a shooting like that (I’m shaking still while writing this, and it’s been nearly 20 years), and Illinois lawmakers are the only ones who still want crime victims unarmed.

But if it comes to it, I will carry for my own protection, if I feel it necessary. Lawmakers sit behind metal detectors and guards to go to work everyday, while school kids never get that luxury.

If we lose our Second Amendment right to those lawmakers, then we deserve what we get. Stand up and tell them to change the law, or step out from behind their security, and live the risk we live with everyday.

Note to readers – The mass shooting that Mr. Hess survived occurred at the Fairchild Air Force Base hospital, near Spokane, Wash., on June 20, 1994. Before being confronted and shot dead by a security policeman, the gunman killed five people and wounded 22.